


Phonecalls (Ohno ver.)

by honooko



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2892845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honooko/pseuds/honooko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ohno and Nino apparently called each other quite frequently when Ohno was still in Kyoto. I couldn’t resist elaborating on this new canon!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phonecalls (Ohno ver.)

Ohno hadn’t punched the last number in yet. His thumb hovered over the button, having already tapped the rest in by memory. He tried to tell himself he just had a very good memory for numbers, but it was in reality that he had learned Nino’s phone number within a day of getting it.

He still remembered asking for it. Ohno was shy at the best of times, but he couldn’t remember ever needing as much courage asking any girl for their number as much as he did for Nino’s. And the genuine surprise on his face had made him for half a second wish he had never said anything at all. This was quickly wiped away by the massive, gleeful grin on Nino’s face. 

He hit the last button, listening to the dial tone for all of a second before Nino picked it up. Ohno smiled as he pictured Nino waiting by the phone; it was ridiculous to think he did it, but the image was cute.

“Hello?”

“Nino?” Ohno confirmed. Once Nino’s mother had picked up, and she had let him awkwardly explain who he was and why he was calling before cackling and handing it over to her son. 

“Hey!” Nino said, sounding adorably energetic. Ohno had spent weeks in Kyoto trying to convince himself that he didn’t think Nino was adorable, or funny, or clever, or any of the other hundred things he’d noticed about Nino. 

Ohno stretched out on his bunk, feeling the tightness in his shoulders relax and spread down his body. It was funny how these little brief phone calls had this effect on him. After hours and hours dancing, singing, changing, dealing with the surprisingly complex social circles of Johnny’s Kyoto drama and dance program, it was nice to lie back and let the day’s stresses roll off of him.

“So how was your week?” he asked, knowing the response would be wonderfully entertaining.

“Aiba-chan tripped going up the stairs yesterday and knocked down like three other guys and Sho had to come and rescue him from the mess.” 

Ohno chuckled warmly. No matter what happened, Nino always had a story for him. It was usually something ridiculous, but delivered in such a flat tone of objective statement he couldn’t help but giggle.

“He can still dance though?” Ohno inquired.

“No, but let’s be honest, he couldn’t really dance to start with.”

That startled a laugh out of Ohno so hard that his body tried to sit up, smashing his head against the ceiling over his bunk. Ears ringing, he rubbed the bump developing over his eyebrows. He heard Nino asking what happened, but it took a second for him to stop thinking in curses. Nino sounded very worried, so Ohno quickly reassured him.

“I laughed and sat up,” he whined, “and I smashed my head on the ceiling. The roof over the bunks is really low.”

“You’re in bed?” Nino asked. Ohno lay back, stretching out again and staring at his ceiling. He was painfully aware of how cold and empty the bunk, and his room overall, was. He’d done a pretty good job of not thinking about it until Nino pointed it out. Ohno felt his heart jump, but he forced himself to sound casual.

“Yeah,” Ohno said, “Lights-out is in about twenty minutes, but Macchin isn’t back yet.” Macchin had been a bit weird about Nino lately. For whatever reason, he and Nino hadn’t hit it off as well as Ohno would have expected. Macchin had, for years now, been basically an extension of Ohno himself. They thought the same way, they had the same dreams, they made the same choices—but for whatever reason, lately, they’d been sliding apart. And when Ohno met Nino, he realized there was another kind of connection he’d never experienced before.

It was strange to think that a skinny fifteen year old kid would be so interesting to him, but Nino was. Nino made friends easily, but Ohno always got the impression that Nino had a quieter, more calculating side to him that other people didn’t see. It was obvious to Ohno—just as obvious as the adorable quirked up smile on Nino’s face. There was something about Nino that made Ohno want to be near him; he wasn’t sure he could even pin-point the exact reason. He just knew that talking to Nino felt easier than anything he’d ever done, and being around Nino was the most genuine fun he’d felt in years. It had taken every drop of control he had to see Nino off to Tokyo with a smile, when all he wanted to do was ask him to stay for a little while longer.

Macchin didn’t understand it, and Ohno wasn’t sure if he ever would. Ohno’s first few phone calls happened when Macchin was there in the room, but he’d been suspiciously scarce for them since, and Ohno couldn’t shake the feeling that Macchin was threatened by Nino somehow.

Maybe he’d noticed that Ohno was attracted to Nino in a way he’d never been to Macchin. Their friendship had survived Macchin’s feelings towards him, but Ohno was beginning to think that the strain of Ohno actually liking someone else might do what an unrequited confession hadn’t: break them up for good. He also wasn’t sure that he could ever even tell someone else what he felt about Nino. Macchin was the only person he could trust with it, but he was also the last person who ever wanted to know.

“Where is he?” Nino asked, reminding Ohno of where their original conversation had been heading.

“Dunno,” Ohno said. He couldn’t quite smother the irritation in his voice. “Probably trying to buy cigs.”

“Won’t he get caught?” Nino asked. “They watch you guys so closely.”

“They ignore most stuff though,” Ohno explained. “If nobody sees you doing it, it’s not such a big deal. A bunch of guys got caught drunk last fall, but they’d already finished drinking so they only got sent home. It could have been worse.”

“So you can smoke and drink as long as they don’t actually see you? That’s pretty... convenient.”

“Smoking, drinking, girls—the usual.”

The words had barely left his mouth when he realized it could be interpreted as saying he participated in all three. He did smoke on occasion and drink even more rarely, but he never brought back girls. Part of it was that he was about as smooth as gravel and couldn’t get a girl to give him more than a curious glance, but he honestly wasn’t that interested. He was _busy_ ; getting involved with girls took more energy than he had.

He also didn’t want Nino to think, even for a second, that Ohno was in anyway attached to someone. For various reasons.

“I don’t—not the girls,” he said quickly.

“But the smoking and the drinking?” Nino asked.

“Sometimes? I don’t know. When we’re not rehearsing there’s not really a lot to do,” Ohno confessed. “I always feel kind of bad about it, you know? But Macchin’s doing it, so I should at least...”

“Support him, kind of?” Nino suggested. Ohno couldn’t help but feel that Nino had just hit the nail right on the head of the entire issue. How much of this entire ‘dancing in Kyoto’ adventure had been Ohno’s idea? He couldn’t even remember who wanted it more, or who thought of it at all. It just felt like one day, they agreed to do it. And now that they were a year in, neither of them knew how to stop.

“I guess,” Ohno agreed softly. “I don’t want to get in trouble, but if he does, I just—I don’t want him to get in trouble _alone._ ”

“Is it worth it though?” Nino asked quietly. “The risk, I mean.”

Ohno went silent. He’d wondered the same thing recently; was what he had here, with Johnny’s, really worth the trouble? He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a dancer anymore. Art was starting to look more and more enticing, and he often felt like he was better at that anyway. And his friendship with Macchin, while very important to him, was also starting to seem like something that was on some level holding him back from taking full control of his own life and future. It was the kind of heavy-duty thinking that gave him headaches and heartaches both.

“Oh-chan?”

“It’s not worth it,” Ohno said. Somehow when Nino said things that Ohno had been thinking about already, it become a lot more obvious what Ohno actually felt about it. “You’re right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Ohno said with a small laugh. He felt a twinge in his chest—it hurt a little to know that he was admitting to it. “I asked.”

“He’s your friend,” Nino said. 

“He is,” Ohno agreed. “But he’s stupid sometimes. We all are.” Stupid enough to drop out of high school and run away to Kyoto with your best friend to be dancers, for example, knowing full well you are the most homesick-prone human being on the damn planet.

“You’re not, Nino,” he said truthfully. In the eight weeks they’d spent together, he could say that with complete surety.

“I am often stupid,” Nino protested. “Very stupid. Incredibly stupid, in fact.”

“Nah,” Ohno said. “You’re smart. That’s why everybody trusts you. They know you’ll get them out of whatever mess they’re in somehow.”

“Do _you_ trust me?” Nino asked, sounding genuinely unsure.

Ohno felt his heart start galloping again. He did. He _did_ trust Nino, so quickly that it almost felt wrong. But Nino smiled at him, laughed at his jokes, leaned up against him—it all felt right. It felt real. And he absolutely was not brave enough to say that to Nino just yet.

“I don’t give my phone number to just anybody,” Ohno said with a laugh, hoping Nino would only hear humor in it, and not the barely-hidden truth. 

“Joke’s on you,” Nino informed him. “I’m actually a stalker. I’m standing outside your dorm right now. I’m going to watch you sleep.”

How did he _do_ that? How did he be so playful and cute in so few words? It made Ohno want to be wittier, if only to keep the banter going. But Ohno wasn’t good at banter—he was better with one-off comments that didn’t require him to leave a leading statement at the end. It was a miracle anyone ever realized he was trying to flirt at all, he was so bad at it.

“That’s okay,” Ohno said, yawning around the words. “If it’s Nino, I don’t mind being watched.”  
He pictured Nino peeking over the edge of the windowsill and smiled. The door thumped lightly, Macchin sticking his head in. His eyebrows knit when he saw the phone in his hand, but Ohno quietly shook his head and murmured, “Almost done. Come on.” Macchin nodded and came inside, smelling more than a little bit of cigarette smoke.

“Macchin’s back,” he said. “I have to go.”

“When should I call you next?” Nino asked. Ohno bit back ‘tomorrow,’ but barely.

“Thursday?” Ohno suggested. “Same time as tonight.”

“Thursday then,” Nino agreed. 

“It’s a date,” Ohno said, meaning it with every fiber of his being. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Don’t get caught.”

“Don’t fall up the stairs,” Ohno replied with a grin, knowing Nino would appreciate the joke. Humor was one thing they never had to work at. They hung up, and for a long moment, Ohno stared at the phone in his hand, wishing he could call Nino back immediately and just chat for a little bit more.

“Anybody see you?” Ohno asked Macchin out loud from the top bunk. There was only silence in response; concerned, Ohno rolled over and let one arm dangle off the edge. “Macchin?”

“Are you going to keep doing this?” Macchin asked, sitting down on his bottom bunk.

“What?” Ohno asked. “Doing what?”

Macchin was quiet; Ohno wondered if he was thinking, or just avoiding the question entirely. Finally, the silence broke.

“He’s fifteen, Satoshi. He doesn’t care as much as you do. He never will.” The bunk squeaked as Macchin lay down, and Ohno rolled back over, staring at the ceiling. Macchin reached out and hit the light switch, plunging them into darkness to match the silence.

Maybe six months ago, Ohno would have believed him. Now?

Next week, Nino would call him again and Ohno knew without a shadow of a doubt that when he did, he’d be smiling. That was more than enough for him.


End file.
